Vancouver Aquarium

We made it to Vancouver! After the 12-hour road trip yesterday, we are all a bit worn out.

While Dad had meetings in the morning, the kids and I laid low in the conference hotel, the Pan Pacific Hotel Vancouver.  At the heart of Vancouver's downtown waterfront, it will be a perfect home base for us during the next few days.

We ventured out for lunch at Steamrollers, which serves west-coast style burritos and bowls with all ingredients exclusively cooked with steam. The result is a fresh, healthy version of one of my son's and my favourite foods . . . burritos!

After lunch we headed out to the place that topped our Vancouver to-do list: the Vancouver Aquarium. It is Canada's first public aquarium and marine science centre that rescues and rehabilitates marine mammals to release them back into the wild. They do this with roughly 100 marine mammals each year.

The Vancouver Aquarium provides a home for marine mammals that are deemed non-releasable and utilizes what they learn through their animal care programs to inform other marine scientists around the world and to educate the public about conservation practices.

It will likely be the most pricey adventure of our summer road trip. General admission is $34 for adults, $20 per child, and children 3 and under are free. I ended up purchasing an annual membership, which came with a free pass for a guest {my husband} and 20-percent-off other purchases which included my son's ticket, food and any gift shop purchases. This saved us about $10 on our tickets and food and allowed us to go through a much shorter line to get in.

The kids especially enjoyed playing in the new Clownfish Cove interactive indoor play area. They pretended to be on a marine animal rescue team and loved every minute of it. 

We all learned a lot about marine life and enjoyed our afternoon. Although the aquarium closes at 6 p.m., we had a special opportunity to enjoy the aquarium into the evening as my husband's conference held a reception and dinner in the Arctic Deck of the aquarium. We were able to learn even more fun facts about the mother-daughter pair of beluga whales that call the Vancouver Aquarium home. 

Baby girl fell asleep at the table during supper, so I think it is safe to say it was a full, fun day!